Beginning Word Count: 8,850
Yesterday, I indicated I was going to talk about my own personal faith. This is a more difficult blog piece than many others, not because I do not know what I believe, but because it is different than a lot of people. I do know I'm not out there alone in the world with this set of beliefs; however, it is not the commonly practiced faith in this country.
Firstly, I will state this, and in many ways this is a coming out. I do not consider myself to be a Christian. (Sorry, Mom. Of course, you'd probably already figured that out.) This is absolutely NOT an invitation for any Christian to witness to me. I live in America. I grew up in a Christian household. I promise you: I've had the opportunity to hear the message of Christianity.
I do not believe in it.
That being said: I do think that a lot of the teachings of Jesus are very poignant and powerful, and worth respecting.
I have more of a problem with the Church than I do with the God. Regarding the God of the Christians, I'm undecided. But I do not believe in the CHURCH. I know, that is a very strange statement. But it is truly Christians who have turned me off of the Church itself.
Enough, for now, about what I do not believe in. What do I believe?
I believe that there is a personal divine entity. And while I say this, it is different than the "personal God" that Christians claim. This one is more of a matter of the divine is such that it knows how best to appeal to each. Some people respond to the paternal parent figure. Others respond to a maternal. (Father God. Mother Nature.) Others simply rejoice in the spirit and awe that seems to surround them. Some cultures cannot conceive of a single deity who could manage all of creation...so they have a pantheon of deities. And some are self sufficient, and do not believe in a being of creation.
And each of these people are right.
That's the departure that a lot of people have with me. How can everyone be right? It's because I do not believe that there is One True Way. I do not believe "there is no way to the Father except through Jesus Christ, the Son."
I do not believe in prayer. I believe in sending healing thoughts and loving intentions -- and those are very different, while they sound the same. One is begging for diving intervention. Asking God to help. The other is simply letting people know they are in my thoughts and I am hoping they will receive the care and strength they need.
I'm not sure exactly when I formulated this. I believe it was some time when I was in high school. I know I started to question the wisdom of the Church itself in eighth grade...when I asked a question after reading the Bible. It was a logical question, to me. But the answer was not forthcoming from the preacher. And my mother's answer was even less satisfying (although, more of a true answer). The preacher pretty much told me not to question the Bible. My mother, however, took the question seriously. The question was: if Jesus is the son of God, born of Mary....why does the Bible trace his lineage through Joseph? Should it not be Jesus son of Mary daughter of ____ son of ______ son of _____? (The begats are boring and annoying, but really did end up causing a chain reaction.)
The preacher pretty much gave me a non-answer. My mother said that Mary was related to Joseph, a couple generations back, but it was traditional for lineage's to be traced through the man.
That told me a lot about the opinions of the people who wrote the Bible. Women were SO unimportant to them that the very vessel of God's birth on earth was not worthy of having her name mentioned in the lineage of the Christ.
And that really was not a satisfactory position. I did not appreciate being told I was less than by a stupid book written by a bunch of old men many millenia ago, and perpetuated by men today.
That was really the defining moment of my quest for my faith. It was when I started questioning the faith I had been raised in.
I can find numerous examples of modern Christians treating women as less than, in the name of religion -- from churches who do not let women stand behind the pulpit, to churches who consider themselves to be forward thinkers because they ALLOW it. (How big of you. I'd almost rather the honest misogyny rather than the sanctimonious blessing.) The Southern Baptist Convention who recently decreed that women could not be ordained Baptist ministers. Preachers who tell women in abusive relationships that they should stay and pray for their husbands. Religions where women are not given education or allowed to hold jobs, because their job is to birth and raise children. Women are incubators. All over the place, misogyny is prevalent in the major faiths. And these same faiths keep women from their potential or even fighting for their equality.
That is not my God.
My God did not create me to be lesser than others. And I refuse to worship the God of a people who believe this. That is the God they need, and the God they want. And they are welcome to Him.
But that is not MY God. To me, that God is not worthy of Praise.
Who is my God? I do not know. My God is not gendered, nor one that has a heirarchy of the blessed. The Divine is not something that we would recognize in human terms. It is all and nothing and everything surrounding us.
I feel more spiritually connected in forrests where I can hear the whispers of the leaves in the trees sending messages around me. I cannot understand them. But I can feel them. When I am in mountains and surrounded by trees, I am more at peace than any where else. But I can still hear the divine in the splashes of the water against the sandy beaches and the roar on the wind. My divine is nature.
I do not recognize a set of religious tomes as the beacon of morality. I believe firmly that you can be a good person without reading the Bible. The parts of the world where Christianity and Islam are not the religions of choice is not any more full of savagery than the areas where these faiths are practiced.
So when I hear that athiests are immoral because we do not have a God to tell us what is right and wrong, I wonder more: who is more immoral? The one who needs to be told these things....or the one who does it simply because they know it is wrong.
Who is more moral? The one who follows a path of decency because it is right....or the one who does so because of a fear of eternal punishment?
There was a point in my life when I called myself a Christian. Then there was a point when I did not but would not say so, not because I believed it was wrong to not be Christian, but because I did not wish to hurt others with that knowledge. However, while I still do not want my parents to be hurt because I have recanted their religion, I do also feel I must be more honest about my own faith.
I currently am a member of the Unitarian Universalist faith. This is a faith which encompasses many faiths. I will admit, there are many congregations which are rather hostile to Christianity as a whole, because so many members have been outcast and abused by that faith that it is hard to separate the message of Christianity with the Church of the Christians.
I've tried hard, in my mind, to give each Christian the opportunity to show their own practice and not judge them on my opinion of the Church as a whole. I have found that most Christians I encounter are far more living examples of the faith than the preachers and politicians. I don't trust Christian ministers (and I'll be more specific on that. Just because you've been ordained does not mean I do no trust you. But I do not trust those with Churches who are in positions of power. Far too may of them abuse it.) I certainly do not trust the politicians who claim themselves to be Christians. They are the false prophets who preach on corners for show rather than with earnest meaning and intent to commune with God. (see, I told you I'd read the Bible. I don't know what passage that references, but it is in one of the Corinthians)
People who live their faith and practice with earnest deeds impress me.
But not the Church.
I mentioned I'm a Unitarian Universalist. We have no dogma or creed, no specific religious text. We take the faiths of the world for their philosophy and use them to better ourselves and try to make the world a better place. There are seven principles we agree on (or agree to respect if we do not agree with them).
These are our principles (from uua.org)
1. We believe in the inherent worth and dignity of every person
2. Justice, equity, and compassion in human relations
3. Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations
4. A free and responsible search for truth and meaning
5. The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large
6. The goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all
7. Respect for the interdependent web of all existence in which we are a part
What does that mean? I'll break down what each of these mean to me.
1. Inherent worth and dignity - to me, this is a statement of equality. It does not matter what your race, religion, orientation, gender, nationality, belief etc happens to be. You are important. You are not less than. And you should be afforded the same rights as others.
2. Justice - this is a tie back to the inherent worth principle. If you believe that everyone has value, should not everyone be entitled to justice and equality? Why should one group be afforded freedoms denied another?
3. Acceptance - this is path to how congregations work. I might be druidic and another congregant Budhist and another Christian. I cannot tell the Budhist he is completely insane for following that path when clearly nature is more valuable. I respect the spiritual path of them both.
4. Search for meaning - this means that I don't just get to say "I'm done" . I've got a responsibility to understand and develop in my faith.
5. Democratic process - no one person gets a greater voice than others.
6. World peace - there are several social justice projects where UUs participate in trying to bring peace and justice to the world as a whole. The witness of the UU is not one of bringing scriptures, but actions.
7. Respect for the interdependent web of life - this fits very much with my own personal senses. The nature surrounding us is vital. Messing with it can harm us. That does not mean we do not grow and develop and use the world around us -- it means we respect it, and try to do as little damage as possible.
I can accept each of these principles. Some I embrace more readily than others, but there are none that make me stomp my proverbial feet.
When I discovered the UUs, I discovered a group of people who understood what I had felt for a long time -- spirituality is very personal, and each of us has a different path to the divine. No one path is greater than the other -- the one we should be on is greater for US.
This is why I have such a problem with the Church. It demeans that, and it demeans those who do not follow its strictures and encourages its followers to do the same.
But the teachings of Jesus are much grander than that. And I embrace the teachings as wonderful knowledge. I believe Jesus was a wise man and a prophet of faith. I just no longer believe he was the son of a god.
And that's okay for me. Just as it is okay for others to believe that he is.
Today's Word Count: 2,177
Total Word Count: 10,977
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